Drops of Water on Floor
mikethe3dguy
Posts: 515
I'm trying to create drops of water on the floor in Iray, under a character who'd working our heavily. Any hints as to the best way to achieve that? My problem right now is in two areas;
1) The pattern of drops and small puddle shapes. I've got some liquid splash and puddle products I could use but they're not really right so it looks like I might be better off creating my own. Can I possibly do it by creating a pattern for an opacity map that I apply to a plane or flattened-out cube primitive?
2) Getting the water shader on the drops and puddles to be visible in the scene. The surface is a light wood floor in a room that's fairly well-lit. Will I have an easier chance if I dial down the room's light level for more contrast from the reflections on the water?
Thanks!
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Comments
opacity map on a primitive would work but you'd probably want to also add in a bump/normal and probably some displacement, depending on how much depth/rounded edges
your floor drops need.
what type of wood flooring is it ? if its not heavily varnished or shiny, sweat drops/puddles would probably slightly darken the floor. you could experiment with volumetric settings on the water shader.
changing the lighting might help, also experiment with camera and lighting angles, light catching the puddles at side angles will probably show it off better than direct on (if I remember correctly)
Could try this product https://www.daz3d.com/sy-splats-drips-and-splatters-for-dforce
Yeah, with bump or normal map should do the trick probably. It's not heavily varnished, more like a basic maple shader. Would volumetrics be involved if it's just small drops and minor thin puddles? Not too clear on volumetrics other than using products that are basically primitive shapes containing dust and fog suspensions. I'm messing with lighting now, as well as the base color of the Iray water shader and starting to get a little bit of traction.
I've checked out that product and it looks great, but there don't seem to be any patterns that are mostly a field of small drops.
Dforce a sphere and instance it?
Oh, that's an interesting idea...
Well, I did end up using this. I created a plane and water drop normal and opacity maps, using the uber Iray water shader. Never could get it to show more than just a little in test renders or the interactive preview. So I gave up and bought SY's product. There is one SY map that's reasonably close to what I needed. Ultimately it shows in the render but doesn't look as good as I'd hoped, since the maps are meant to be for "slime" and not water, so the upper surface is somewhat lumpy and gelatinous. But at least it saved me from an afternoon of frustration!
You should be able to find other maps that look more like water. Sickleyield makes a whole range of products in this vein, no pun intended. There is a a dFroce rain/shower one I use a lot.
Maps for water? With PBR rendering?
Edit: Yes of course for oceans and pools, but for droplets?
Are you under the impression a droplet wouldn't have a surface?
No! Rather that it has reflective and refractive features. Granted, you can alter the appearance of the tiny drop by adding normal and displacement maps. But they will not magically set index of refraction to 1.33, will they. But may be the droplets are really huge and need a complex shape:)
Real drops:
And where would you set such features? I'm genuinely curious how you think this works.
I've no idea I don't use IRay. I'll have to check the IRay Uber. Of course, I know you know your ways around IRay and I take your word for it if you insist you can't make water without bumpmaps. Nah only joking...I must be missing something and I suggest you tell me what it is.
I reason that the IRay Uber must have some refraction settings, maybe it's called refraction weight? Maybe you can set IoR to the right amount without using maps? And maybe there is a way to set reflection strength...after all you can render both mirrors and matte/rough surfaces in IRay, no? Could it be glossy weight? And maybe IRay is clever enough to be able to produce refraction without having to use a refraction map? Wrong again?
Enlighten me!
In aweSurface I set three things for a waterdrop, no maps. I set transmission strength to 100%. I set IoR to1.3. I set specular/reflection to near 100% with a very small roughness value. Done.
The shaders are part of the surface. The surface is also where maps are set. You don't have to set every map and iray doesn't have refraction maps.
My comment was specifically that the poster didn't like the maps that made the drop look like slime rather than water so maye he could find a map that worked better. I wasn't going to get too deep into the weeds into manually setting shader settings for someone who didn't seem to know to do this.
I had a very good result with the thin glass shader what comes with Daz...
Fair enough:) But still curious about those maps... are they roughnessmaps or something else? Because I really can't see the value of using for example diffuse- or height maps on something very small like a droplet?
If you like the result, that's all that counts in the end. But from a physical point of view, I believe thin glass has no refraction, that's how it works with aweSurface anyway;)